


The Treatment

by Bryn Lantry (Bryn)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1997-01-01
Updated: 1997-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:15:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bryn/pseuds/Bryn%20Lantry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Avon gets the job of telling a brainwashed Blake he used to be gay</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Treatment

**Author's Note:**

> printed in the zine 'Risk', editor Tashery Shannon, 1997

##

"You lost the wrong crewmember, Blake."

Blake sat with a sketchpad and stylus. He had the big translucent sector map out, down at the end of the flight deck, where his jottings went up in white among the colour-coded planets. After marking Federation posts with slashed crosses, he now charted a data-gathering flight past them. "True," he grunted. "Then again, who would have been the right one?"

At his station, Avon crossed his arms. He wasn't supposed to have an answer for that. "Just about any of them except Gan. Do you know, Gan was the only one of us from the London who hadn't at least contemplated dumping you?"

"Showing your cards, Avon?" He drew a loop, touching three planets of a star system.

"You can see my cards, Blake. I never hid them."

"No. You're rather loud about them. To give me fair warning? Or is it a morale game?"

"The crew know where I stand. Then—if they are so minded—they can step over from you to me."

"And are they so minded?"

From this angle Avon only saw the slope of his cheek, but he could tell by the thickening about his cheekbone that Blake had on his patient smile. "Vila is getting nosy about whether I am serious about ditching you. As for Jenna, she's democratic. While you were off the ship feeling sorry for yourself, she was only waiting for a vote. When the vote goes against you, she goes. With Gan dead, you don't have the cards stacked any longer. You have a time difficulty now, Blake."

"Do I?"

"You have to do enough to trigger a general rebellion, before losing enough of your crew that the remainder steps over to me. Do you think you can?"

At last Blake swung his head around. "With you behind me, what can't I do? If only to get out of your way." He crinkled up his eyes. Another dash on the sketchpad, then he walked over to inspect the sector map, biting the end of his stylus, forgetting Avon.

#

The Comrade, whose name slipped Avon's mind, was being a pest. Avon read that in the butting-away slant of Blake's head, which meant he wasn't in the mood to be badgered. Comrade sat with his cap between his knees, doing nothing while Blake browsed through Avalon's tactical papers. Walking up to them, Avon stared at the stranger, with intent to repel him from the barracks. "Excuse us. Blake and I have business."

Comrade jumped up off the camp bed. As he sidled out, his wrinkled blue eyes yearned behind him on Blake. "See you in the mess, comrade."

"Yes, Janty," answered Blake among his papers.

After he had gone, Avon sat on the camp bed in his stead.

Blake said to him, "Business, do we?" 

"Well, he drives me up the wall." Then Avon asked, "Is he any use to you?"

"About my memory?" Blake shoved away the starcharts and notes. "Not a lot. He has nothing significant to tell me. Raids—plenty of raids. I knew I went on raids." He humphed, elbows on his knees. "What he heard from me about my brother and sister, but he never met them, neither of them were political. No, I haven't learnt anything."

After three days with Avalon's army, and the Comrade, Blake was tired of being reminded of what he'd forgotten about. Avon said, "I thought he might be a fake. But he can't be if he's told you nothing—can he?"

"A fake?"

"A plant. Misinformation. Who knows? You wouldn't."

"He's not a Federation plant. Just a Freedom Party faithful, lucky to miss our last strikes. Those that went wrong."

"He must be nostalgic. The rate he trails after you."

"Wants me to remember him, I expect. No prospect of that." Blake brooded a while at the graffiti, family portraits and nude holos along the barracks wall above the rows of campbeds, then picked up his papers again. Avalon and he were thrashing out a tandem strategy. Avon kept a cursory ear on their plans, glad that Blake was pulling things together again after Control. He'd rather Blake were promoted off the Liberator, to revolutionary general on Earth. Than have to be dumped.

When Comrade couldn't hang around Blake himself, like a lost dog whose owner no longer recognised him, he hung around Blake's crew. With Vila he shared jokes and delta slang, and soma. With Jenna, the notorious smuggler, he remained deferential. Once or twice she was 'ma'am' rather than 'comrade', until she snapped, "Listen, the name's Jenna," after which he only managed to address her as 'um'. With Avon, he only listened and squinted as if sizing him up. Seeing what kind of company Blake kept these years? On their last day with Avalon, the Comrade ambushed Avon behind the barracks. On his way back from the latrines among the trees, Comrade was hanging around on the footworn trail. "Did you want something?" asked Avon.

"Yeah."

Comrade had oily blond hair, a bony figure, and the scars of frostbite on his nose, perhaps from that ice planet where Blake and Avalon had first met. On his singlet under his camouflage gear was a badge of a dual sun system. The badge and the loitering made Avon wary. "Well?"

"Can we talk in private?"

"We are." To his left was the windowless rear of the barracks, where the Liberator crew slept along with a platoon. To his right were the dim trees. "Aren't we?"

Comrade chafed a dirty sleeve across his ear. "It's about Roj."

That was all right then. "What about Blake?"

"Guess he hasn't changed much." 

"You tell me."

"Dreams about the Federation at night. If he walked in his sleep he'd go patrolling. If he talked in his sleep he'd agitate the citizens. No time for a private life."

"He's too busy being a public menace."

"That's Roj." Comrade squirmed his heel in the leafy soil. "You mean he's not with anyone then?" he said in a rush.

Avon arched his brows.

"I've grounds for asking," muttered Comrade.

"I don't have a bug in his cabin. Why don't you ask him?"

"Figured maybe he's with Stannis."

"Why don't you ask her?" He frowned. It was no business of Comrade's. "If there's nothing else—"

"Avon." The direct name stopped Avon from walking past him. "You have to hear this. It's important to Roj."

"If it is important to Blake, why must I hear anything?"

"Because I don't know what else to do." Slapping his cap against his thigh, Comrade rambled out, "I can't judge whether he ought to be told. Or when, or how. He's a stranger to me now. I daren't tell him flat. But I can't withhold the information. If he's living a Federation lie, and I don't stop him, I'd be as bad as them. Roj has to know."

"Then tell Blake," said Avon cautiously. "Don't tell me."

"Did they just kind of neutralise it, or is he averse? I don't know enough. But whatever, I know that learning the truth is going to put him in conflict with his brainwashing. How severe, that depends. Maybe you know how thorough a job they did?" Comrade looked to him for help.

"A job on what?" Avon asked at last. It sounded nasty.

"He told me about a Security operative where he worked, when the Administration had him as an exhibit of political virtue. Now he's sure she was an agent keeping an eye on him. She, er, followed him home too, regular as clockwork once a week. Roj reckons he didn't even like her. That he must have suspected her at the time. But he didn't knock her back. Said he couldn't, like she had him in a kind of automatic submission."

"No doubt she was an agent. He'd have been under hypnotic command to hide nothing from her." Avon was thinking, hypnotised rape. By an Intelligence fieldworker. Terrific. Is that why Blake keeps to himself?

"Roj had no conception when he told me this, no conception." Comrade weaved his head from side to side. "Picked up something fishy about her, he said. There was nothing fishy about him in it. Why'd this agent sleep with you? I asked him. Keep him happy, he said. Only, before his treatment, that wouldn't have kept him happy. After his treatment, well, they have to put theory into practise for him, don't they? Stop him lapsing. Finish off the job."

The penny dropped, with an awkward jangle. "You mean he didn't go for her kind." Blake? Like Tynus? he thought.

"No. No, he never did. And the way he told me, I just knew he didn't know. I'm familiar with that face of his yet, if not his mind. I can tell when he's up front. He saw nothing off in sleeping with her, apart from her being a bogey from Central. That's when I thought, uh-oh. They got him."

"Then I suppose he went for his kind." Blake is nothing like Tynus, he thought.

"Roj didn't hide that from us in the party." Comrade squinted off into the trees. "He wasn't ashamed, you know? Emotions can't be policed, any more than thoughts, he used to say. You can't separate ways of loving. He said that to a few of us who maybe needed to hear it. And boy," he grinned. "There were a few of us as had a soft spot for him."

Avon stared.

"I don't know if he had any fellows," Comrade told him. "He's as earnest as ever. I used to be like that, ah I was keen. The armed struggle first, later on I can find a bed to fall into, after the people are free. You can't go having a fantastic time when slaves are being carted off to modification. Roj had his alpha guilt... reckon he's past that now, after getting himself treated as bad as any delta... and the labour grades like me just thought of our family and neighbours and didn't squander the time on enjoying ourselves." Comrade smiled in fondness for those early years. "Here I am, in the struggle yet, under Avalon this time. I mean to die in the struggle." He wiped his sleeve on his face. "But I'm thirty-nine, and at least now I have a comrade here—I love him, that's the truth, and he me again—"

What a charming story, thought Avon. He has found love.

"And then I run into Roj. See him with moral rehabilitation on top of his memory erase. I have it lucky, don't I? Roj can't even snatch the odd night to live for himself."

What a sad story, thought Avon. Blake hasn't.

"I'm that sorry for him," Comrade shook his head again, "that I don't know what to do. What's worse?"

Avon knew what he shouldn't have done. Now he knew and Blake didn't, while Blake should know and he shouldn't. "What were you expecting me to do about it?"

"Dumping it on him is going to upset his conditioning. I'm not versed in brainwashing, but you can get medical reactions, bad reactions... Now, he was a showpiece after his trial, but whether he thinks as a nice citizen ought to think... Do you know?"

"No, I don't know," said Avon. "And how am I to dig this piece of data out of his brain? Drop vilifications of homosexuals and see whether he joins in?"

"Whatever you do, go easy. He's been mucked up enough."

"You didn't know what to do, so you passed it on to me?"

"You can spend the time with him over it. And he won't hear me, I'm no-one to him now. I picked you."

"Why me?" asked Avon.

"Ah, Vila's too kind-hearted, he'd just worry for weeks and be too anxious about treading wrong. Or he'd tell everyone except Roj. And Stannis... she fancies Roj. Don't she? You have that Cally on the ship, but she's a bloody alien."

"And eliminating them left me."

"He listens to you. That's the thing. That's what's needed."

"Well. Blake will be ecstatic that I know more about him than he does."

"Roj'd be more bloody ecstatic to do what his brainwashers tell him, and fancy the girls."

"I can see he wouldn't be happy about it. Though as the hero of the revolution, for the sake of expediency, he probably should be." 

"Should be? Get off," scoffed Comrade. "Anyway, I don't believe those clinic people are so good at their job, that you can enjoy things the way you should, afterwards."

Avon said, "I will read up on conditioning."

"Great," Comrade encouraged him.

"And I will work the flight deck chat around to whether or not he has anything against homosexuals," Avon went on. "Or you could find that out. Why don't you go up and—touch him up?"

"Touch up Roj?" Comrade skewed his face, as if the thought had never struck him. "Eh. He was a hero of mine when I was a lad, and a nice lad he was, too—"

"But you don't have the guts?"

"I could get the effrontery up, for his sake, but for his sake that's too abrupt. He'd scream on me—I heard it hurts them, you know, the hurt is conditioned in. You better read about it," Comrade nodded. Then he said, "I knew as I could trust you with this, Avon. Be a comrade to Roj." With that rebel exhortation, he slung on his old military cap and wandered out from behind the barracks.

Avon waited before he wandered out after. These were soldiers, even if revolutionary soldiers, with a gang sense of humour. Going to the mess for the noon soup and bread, he laid his tray down across from Blake, who nodded at him before plunging back into communications talk with Avalon.

That afternoon, Avon behaved civilly to him.

#

In the medical literature Avon read that memory isn't erased, but shut away. Blake had a mansion of memories where half the doors were stuck, and he couldn't open them himself. Emotional trauma had a tendency to collapse the clinicians' barriers. Shake the house up, and a few doors may fly open.

That engaged Avon's interest. Perhaps, if he'd had aversion therapy, learning that he was homosexual would be emotionally traumatic for him. Traumatic enough to get his memory back?

Not that Avon looked forward to Blake being traumatised in his face, or undergoing therapeutic aversion on the spot.

#

Three weeks later, Avon had an opening to sound Blake out on homosexuals. Though scarcely in the mood to be working on Blake's memory problems, he exerted himself to use it. He couldn't go on twiddling his thumbs, and before dropping the bomb he had to establish whether Blake were a homophobe now. Tynus, being electrocuted, would have nothing to say against the abuse of his privacy.

Blake himself stepped into the discussion that Avon had in mind for him. It was late and Jenna had given the piloting station up to Avon for the night shift. After playing with his TP crystal, Blake paused on his way out, as if just remembering what had gone wrong in the getting of it. "I'm sorry about your friend, Avon."

Avon looked up from the automatics, to where Blake stood beside the weapons console. "Tynus? He's no great loss to me."

"Maybe not. But it isn't easy being betrayed."

"It's easy enough. Just not nice."

"That's what I meant. Had he become a loyalist since you knew him?"

"Tynus always was an ambitious crawler. I should have anticipated it from him." But he hadn't, and was bitter about it. "Stupid of me. But at least we got the crystal."

"Yes, at least we did that," agreed Blake. Though he didn't follow up with another question, he didn't head off to the steps yet.

Go on, Avon ordered himself. "Tynus wasn't any loyalist, Blake—to anything. He did however have things to compensate for. I can see Security keeping him blackmailed. After all, he wasn't such a cowardly toad when he worked with me."

"Blackmailed? Not about your fraud together, surely?"

"No, not about that. He may have misbehaved monetarily since. But Security wouldn't need that kind of dirt on him. Tynus had a handicap from the start, through which they could get to him. His ongoing career in exchange for co-operation."

"Like spying, do you think?" Blake put in. "Doctor Bellfriar was certainly no Federation patriot. Nor his assistant. Bellfriar was the top virologist they had and hardly belonged on Fosforon. Maybe the powers that be wanted an eye kept on him there."

Avon shrugged. "It wouldn't be beneath Tynus. Though I doubt he'd get command of any less obscure base anyway, and he'd enjoy command, however petty."

"What did Security have on him?" asked Blake then.

"Ah. Well, three guesses."

Blake played the game. "Not his politics."

"He hadn't any. Apart from bureaucratic politics, the weasel."

"What, then?" Blake gave up.

"Are political sins the only sins you can think of, Blake? Try sinking your mind somewhat and you might get it."

"I do get it," responded Blake. "With me, when politics wouldn't do, the Administration went for morals charges."

"That's right," said Avon.

Blake lay a hand on the weapons console and remarked, "I sometimes suspect the morals code is as strict as it is so Security can threaten a fair percentage of citizens, into watching the rest of them." He smiled a little and looked up. "It's common. Hard situation to escape from, though."

"Well, when your crime earns you a five year term. As Tynus told me his carried."

"Heavy," commented Blake.

"He was a Moral Deviant Category Three. If you're acquainted with your categories."

"I ought to be. Had a few thrown at me."

"His wasn't trumped up. Tynus was queer all right. Pardon the vernacular, but the legalese is rather longwinded."

"Hm."

That was all Blake said. It could mean the abject pervert, or the poor fellow. Avon pushed on. "I warned him not to be."

"You warned him not to be?" Blake's eyes crinkled slightly.

"Back when we were at tech. And he should have listened."

"I don't expect he had a choice, did he?"

"What's the huge difference?" countered Avon. "I told him to get over it for the sake of his career. Why ruin your prospects? It's not worth the risk."

Blake mulled over that pragmatic take. To judge from the persisting crinkles, he found it eccentric.

"Unless you're filthy rich and beyond touching, then you can get away with anything," Avon continued. "Which was what Tynus counted on."

"True," said Blake. "Money always helps. That or freedom," he smiled.

"You can see what it did to him in the end. But then it always did make him exploitable."

"Who by? The students at tech? People can be barbarous at that age."

Mentally jotting down his soft-heartedness, Avon felt like a spy himself. "You're right, there were boys at tech who weren't above both utilising and persecuting Tynus. I remember dragging him out of trouble once. I wasn't any fighter then, but I threatened that I'd be after them and I'd be armed, should they decide they were going to damage him. It did the trick. Though I gave him hell afterwards for getting me into that. I couldn't walk away and leave him to the thugs."

"No," agreed Blake. "He'd have had a stickier time without you, by the sounds of it. A shame he failed to remember that on Fosforon."

Avon shrugged. But he liked that Blake saw it his way.

Blake mused, "I don't remember university. I wonder if it was a dogfight for me too. I can't have been in with the crowd, politically."

"I can't see you getting yourself cornered, or ostracised. Tynus had the problem of being difficult to like. Whereas you're always in charge. You have a way with idiots."

"You have your own way," Blake nodded at him. "Pity we didn't go to the same university. Did we?" he asked on the flippant off-chance.

"No, I don't recall anyone standing on a upturned bucket in the quadrangle exhorting us about illiteracy among the labour grades."

"And being hauled down from my bucket by the wardens. Unless you happened to be in the vicinity and armed," he started to grin.

"I'm not in that business, Blake. You'd have been on your own."

Blake completed his grin. "Hm. You were beginning to be my hero for a while there. Goodnight, Avon." He walked up the steps.

Well, Blake wasn't a homophobe.

And even if Blake were homosexual, back then, he wouldn't have stooped to the cheap and nasty with thugs, or lost his footing with the same thugs. And he hadn't compromised the way Avon had recommended to Tynus, either. Though at the cost of what he was now.

#

Avon delayed a few days to phrase the news in his head. He decided on a blunt statement, and was only awaiting a chance alone with Blake, when the next planet they went to was Exbar. Blake had had a romance with his cousin. Therefore Comrade was lying. He'd been right first off—Federation misinformation, to harm Blake's reputation or his head.

Through Blake's botched rescue of his cousin and Avon's botched rescue of Blake, three of them were stuck down there with Travis. When Avon was slowed by a wound and the crimos were chasing them, he tried to demand that Blake look out for himself and forget him. That wasn't his dizziness but his guilt talking. The dogs he'd set on Travis could have caught Blake.

Half an hour after they escaped from Exbar, there was a knock on his cabin door. It was Blake, in his ground gear, who looked at Avon's injured arm and said, "How is it?"

Cally should have reported how it was to him, she'd headed for the flight deck after medical. Blake must be stopping by to ask him in lieu of saying, you landed me in trouble back there, but I admit you went to some trouble to pull me out again, something of a mess but I guess we're even.

Avon sawed his arm up and down. "Fine." His jacket scraped against his bandages and he only sawed once. In medical he'd thrown away his holed pullover, but walked here in his jacket which he liked enough to have mended.

"Good," said Blake. "Get some sleep."

He was about to go, when Avon asked out of the blue, "Was your uncle's crime political, Blake?" He had an agenda for engaging Blake in a chat.

"Ushton?" Blake paused in the doorway. "He used to go off Outside and they caught him. Not politics, I think. More like claustrophobia. In his school days he went out on a dare, earning fifteen credits in the process, and he kept going after that, every now and then. He liked it."

"And Inga? Any heinous crimes to her name, or was she transported with her father so he wouldn't be lonely?"

"Inga was born on the penal colony. With the co-operation of whom, I can't tell you and neither can she. Ushton never talks about what happened to her mother. Forbidden topic. Believe it or not, Ushton could be daunting when you're not his size yet."

"Weren't you? What age were you, Blake? If you don't mind me prodding your memory."

"Go ahead. Needs it." Arm against the door frame, Blake racked his memory. "I know I was at university. I spent an end of year holiday on Exbar. It was difficult to get permission, but I did. Just me, not my brother and sister."

"You remember Ushton and Inga, but not them?"

"I remember my brother and sister all right. But it's been tampered with. What Janty told me about them—you know Janty, who we met with Avalon?"

"Your comrade? Yes."

"Well, that's different to what's in my head. Exbar, though, I'd forgotten completely, until I heard the callsign and recognised it. Then seeing Inga in Travis's message. Flooded back at once. I gather I only need a trigger. So there's hope yet for the rest."

Avon was doing mathematics. Elementary, yet he subtracted this from that again lest he were rusty. The sum was beyond Blake. "You were eighteen or nineteen, then," he nodded. "How about Inga?" The fact was, Inga didn't look Blake's age or anywhere near it. If Blake had gone visiting his incarcerated relatives in his mid-twenties, she may at least have been over the age of consent. Blake had a puzzling private life, and it was getting less and less legal.

"She hasn't changed a bit," smiled Blake. "She'd be—what, thirty-three? She wasn't far behind me, a year or so."

And I'm fifty-two, thought Avon. "Must be the fresh air," he remarked, deadpan.

"I envied them, out in the wilds. Sky and wind. Made me restless when I had to go back to the domes."

Blake was talking about the weather, oblivious to the possibility that people may misunderstand his charming love for his cousin. Avon had to ask him outright. "Didn't the daunting uncle Ushton mind you seducing his daughter?"

At last Blake did stare at him, curious about his curiosity. Then he just grinned. "I couldn't have been a worse prospect than the natives. I liked Ushton. Thought of him as a kind of father. For want of mine. He was strong—if on the stubborn side. We got along." For a while Blake pondered his feet, reminiscent in his amnesiac fashion. Then he looked up and said, "I'm off to bed."

That night Avon slept on the notion that anything goes on a penal colony. No, Avon didn't believe that. He believed Blake had his wires crossed. In his happiness at having a memory, he didn't notice the data was corrupt.

Early the next morning, Avon sent Orac after Justice Department statistics. Ushton Blake had been transported from Earth twenty-six years ago. No children recorded at that stage. Not thirty-three or more years ago, as Blake had it. When Blake was nineteen, any child of Ushton's, born on Exbar, could have been no more than eleven.

All right. The simplest explanation is—Blake is lying. Blake likes girls aged nine to eleven, and chats about Inga in the trust that his crew won't think twice about her young face. Ushton hadn't twigged to what his nephew was up to, otherwise he'd have gone after Blake with that knife of his.

The likeliest explanation is—Blake's head is screwed up. His dates are scrambled, he can't count, and he refuses to see that anything is fishy. He played ball with Inga. She had a kid's crush on her grown-up cousin.

When Blake was arrested and treated, six years ago, Inga would have been seventeen to nineteen. The kind of age Blake thought she was fifteen years ago when he was at university. The clinicians had gone to Exbar and used her face, projecting it back into Blake's past.

Yet he'd forgotten Exbar until his memory was jogged. The clinicians had done a sneaky job. More fake memories, suppressed but only just, to trick him when they returned, so Blake believed himself recovering from the treatment when in fact they only had him the tighter. Or else they'd done a bad job, and his memory storage was so leaky that pieces of even the new history were dropping out of the sieve.

Since the clinics had re-written his romances, Avon could be sure that Comrade was right. Why else would they bother? Back to square one. Blake is homosexual. But his mental furniture is more precariously piled than I thought. And now he has Inga, whom he won't want to surrender as a fake. He's proud to have a girl in his past, aside from the Intelligence fieldworker, and proud to have nabbed one of those escapee memories and marched it off to custody in his head.

#

Following Exbar, Avon postponed again. Bluntness may be a mistake. Blake had nothing against homosexuals, but what would he have against another rescripting and recasting of the matters of his heart?

Yet Blake must be told should he be about to sleep with Jenna. No two ways about that. Blake would hate to do what he was brainwashed to do, and mislead Jenna into the bargain, and make a poor fist of it the odds were, swimming against the tide on hypnotic instruction. Not to mention Blake would be furious at him. It would be dismal on all sides, and therefore Avon had to see that Blake and Jenna didn't get together.

He began going later to his cabin, remaining at any crew wind-downs as long as Blake and Jenna both did. Thus he learnt, what wasn't done justice to in working hours, that Jenna was a villainous flirt, playing to the gallery, that is Blake. To withstand her, Blake had to be homosexual. One evening Cally had the flight deck, while the other four joined in a sprawling board game, and drank soma. Vila and Jenna had a swearing match, which was ornate and figurative and Blake had to work hard not to enjoy it too much. Vila called for the true story about Tarvin the Amagon on Zolaf Four. Whether true or not, it was gaudy, and Blake pulled dubious faces, but his eyes loitered on Jenna as on something glamorous. Only on her face, though, even after a few somas.

Blake's high mind fascinated Jenna, and Jenna's wide horizons fascinated Blake. Yet they hadn't slept together.

The game petered out in her story. Jenna said it was time for her to sleep it off, as she had the next watch, and she waved them a gay goodnight. "Me too," said Blake, hauling himself up and going after.

"And me," said Avon, pushing himself up. Vila just slouched further down where he was. At the door, Blake had waited for Avon. "Where are you going?" asked Avon, who was muzzy.

"Quarters," answered Blake, who was muzzier.

"I'm going with you."

Blake had figured that out, which was why he'd paused at the door. "How about we be off, then?" They walked down the corridor together, footsteps not erratic in the least.

"Blake," said Avon on the way.

"Avon?" said Blake.

"There's something you should know."

"Hm?" Avon had stopped at a junction. Blake gestured to the left, and reminded him, lest he'd forgotten, "My cabin's that way. So is yours."

But Jenna's cabin was to the right. They went left together.

Blake resumed, "What was that?"

"What was what?"

"There was something I should know."

"No, there wasn't," Avon told him. Had Blake been going to Jenna's cabin, he wouldn't have waited to walk with Avon, would he? Logical deduction. Besides, to think of broaching it in this state. I must be drunk, thought Avon.

"Hm," said Blake. "See you on the flight deck. You're drunk, Avon."

"Is that correct?" Avon was now leaning on the wall beside Blake's cabin door.

"Never trust your glass to Vila. He's on a campaign to give us hangovers and scotch any work the next day. I'm wise to him." Blake thumbed his door open. "We found mine. Can you find yours?"

"I had half what you did, Blake."

"I hate to think what I resemble, then."

Blake had his shoulders against the door frame and his feet about three feet out in front of him. "I won't mortify you," said Avon. He didn't go away yet. Surveillance on Blake and Jenna was messing up his research schedule, and Blake was sloshed enough to interrogate. He said, "Don't worry. She picked you over Tarvin the Amagon."

"I'm richer," Blake explained at once.

Avon nodded. "Or more charming."

"Wouldn't be difficult, from what I saw."

"You didn't see him greet her. He swept her up and..."

"And?" prompted Blake.

"Kissed her. Less politely than you kissed your cousin." Avon was exaggerating.

Blake remained good-humoured. "He had a less polite upbringing."

"We didn't like to mention it to you at the time, when Tarvin had us locked up."

"Diplomatic of you. You must think me the possessive kind."

"To be possessive, you usually have to have had possessed," pronounced Avon, and was happy with his diction. "Don't you?"

Blake crooked a brow at him. "She hasn't asked me yet," he claimed, which was outrageous.

Avon informed him, "She asked you this evening. And several other evenings that leap to my mind."

"Did she?" returned Blake, who was jolly, and he shook his head. "Well, she'll just have to learn to be more explicit."

Blake found that humorous. Avon was sure that Jenna wouldn't. Nothing happening, he decided. Jenna was the fling you were having when you weren't having a fling.

Next Blake said, "If you don't mind my saying so, you're more gregarious of late, Avon."

Avon said, "Don't swear at me."

"What I mean is," Blake went on, his fingers wriggling into his trouser pockets, "I've noticed you talking to me."

"Perspicacious of you," said Avon, ambitiously, but he wasn't so perfect on that one. 

The drunken Blake said, "Watch yourself. I could get to like it."

"Now shall I tell you what you resemble, Blake?"

"No."

"An over-heavy sack which is about to teeter into a more sacklike heap on the deck. Why don't you go to bed?"

"I'm talking to you," he complained, but he trod his feet up under himself. "Goodnight, Avon. Avon," he said.

"Blake?"

"I like you drunk."

"You like everything drunk."

"I like everything to be drunk?"

"When you are drunk. You like everything."

"True," agreed Blake. "But then I like you sober."

"When you're sober, or when I am?"

Blake thought about that. "Either."

"When you're drunk you like me when you're sober," Avon told him. "Go to bed."

"On my way."

"When I am sober, I like you drunk. Vila has the right idea. To keep you in sloshed harmony with the universe."

"I don't like the Federation when I'm drunk. I have standards, you know."

"I began to doubt it. Goodnight, Blake."

"Goodnight, Avon. Before I hug you."

Avon hiked his brows at him. "Have you ever heard of drunken belligerence, Blake? You should try it sometime. It may be becoming."

"Sorry I'm not a belligerent drunk. What sort are you?"

"Long-suffering?"

"Off you go, then. Before you suffer any longer."

"Goodnight, Blake."

"Goodnight, Avon. You don't want me to hit you goodnight?"

"Well, you'd miss. And I wouldn't. And I'm not dragging you by the heels to where you belong."

"It wasn't a sincere offer anyway," Blake told him.

"As long as your other wasn't a sincere threat," said Avon as he sorted his left ankle from his right, having crossed them where he leant.

"I never threaten. I warn of forthcoming evils which can't be escaped, unless you're quick."

There smote Avon the crafty strategy of getting himself hugged. It may alert or alarm Blake when he reconsidered it after his brains had dried out. Therefore Avon said, "If I were quick, I'd trip."

"I think I've been dared." Blake scraped at his jaw. "Not planning anything, are you?"

"I'm planning to expedite my departure, when my feet are on the right way."

Blake was quicker, and walked right up and hugged him. He had soma breath, and swayed whether on purpose or not. "Nice to hug a human being," he reported.

"What do you usually hug?" Avon went along with it, hands for want of anywhere else on his shoulderblades. This ought to be an eye-opener for Blake—later. It was funny in a way.

"Nothing. Nothing at all." Then Blake told the rear half of his head, "Avon, you're not a bad fellow."

"Thank you," said Avon.

"You're a damned good sort."

"Don't get extravagant."

"For example, your friend—that friend you had who liked men, with the TP crystal."

"My friend who liked men?" He grinned, but Blake couldn't see.

"And Exbar the other week. You went to a lot of trouble. You always do, though you don't promise anything. I think you were a trump about your friend. It's a rare university-aged lad who'd have stood up for him. It was brave. And fair-minded. You can't look for that from many. You talk things down, but then most people are worse than you, and you know that and you're a cynic. I think you are my hero."

If he gets this way with Jenna after a few somas, how haven't they ended up on the deck before now? "That from the hero of the rabble. Have you had enough of this hugging business yet, Blake?"

Blake surrendered him from his arms. "I think you behaved splendidly with that friend of yours."

"I get the picture." So Tynus had been on his mind. Avon's decency to homosexuals went to the bottom of Blake's heart—down where he was homosexual. Maybe he doesn't get this way with Jenna. Maybe he gets this way with me.

"Wish I'd known you back then," said Blake, forearm up on the wall, earnest as only an inebriate can be. "We'd have been great friends. That's what I think."

And if he'd known Blake when he was young, rather than Tynus, what? He said—what Blake had earned hearing, by being Blake, a feat nobody else could do even if they had the guts and amplitude to determine upon it—I am drunk, aren't I?—"I likewise respect you, Blake."

"You do? You respect me?" He grinned. "Even in the sober morning?"

"No, you're too political in the mornings."

"You don't respect my politics?"

"Your politics will get me killed. I do respect you, Blake." Avon nodded. "Does that make you happy?"

"It does," answered Blake, going in a tidal to and fro on his feet though he had his arm braced on the wall, arms which had wrapped him up like a greatcoat. "And respecting you makes me even happier. I can see why they like to have a hero, these rabble of yours. You know then there's people worth it. Cheers you up. Universe isn't so drab. The whole fuss is justified. Makes you feel less bad about the mean bits, the petty degraded bits. Not all like that. There's excellence. There's things to warm your heart and keep you in spirits. Roj Blake—I know what my name is to them, I've had it for years. I understand it helps, but it's just a job to me. Kerr Avon. He's another. He's mine. Never met the match of him. Don't need to. When I know him. Even after the ship goes to you, I can think, there's Kerr Avon, off somewhere, I've known him, I'm the finer for knowing him, knowing what people can be. If I'm sitting in a puddle of mud and everyone's scared and weak and pathetic, and giving in—then there's you. Well, my other heroes are a lot of corpses, besides, they were too like me. Kasabi and Shivan, what they did. Too similar to me, that's the job. You're not even in the job, but you're—outstanding."

Avon wasn't notorious for his modesty, but even he thought these commendations were laid on thick. There was only one rational excuse for them.

Blake has fallen for me.

Blake doesn't know it. He heartily believes that he heartily respects me. To the skies.

Avon responded, "Well, Blake, and if all that makes any sense to either of us in the morning, then I miscalculate our soma stupefaction."

Blake split up in a drunken laugh. "I daresay you're right."

"I'm always right."

"I know it. Except when you foul things up in a very blundering fashion, like on Exbar. You should have told me what you were up to. Off to bed with you, Avon."

"About time," agreed Avon. "Goodnight, Blake."

"Goodnight, Avon."

Avon walked off. Blake watched him, and was watching when he opened his own door twenty metres down, then Blake ducked his head, and Avon went inside.

What do I do with him now? Blake has to know that he doesn't go clasping men to his breast out of admiration. It isn't that funny. He has to know the truth. None stronger than Blake. He can cope with any trouble from his brainwashers. Blake can face up to it. If he can't nobody can. I tell him. Tomorrow I tell him. This is awful.

Flat on his bed, Avon undid his shirt buttons. Roj Blake always knows what the truth is and knows what to do about it. But I have to save him from those clinic doctors of his first.

I wasn't that decent about Tynus. No, I wasn't. He had to push his luck with me—Tynus who always pushed his luck, with bullies, with the authorities. So he tried it on me and I was harsh. "You're not worth a five-year sentence, Tynus. If you can find some cretin who thinks you are, go ahead. It isn't me." These years that doesn't sound harsh, but Tynus and I were friends—before we were too paranoid to have any, me and him also as I learnt on Fosforon. Tynus was witty and only too smart. We got on. Who else would I have roped into my fraud?

And if he could be sordid, at least he was downright about what wanted. He had his own kind of guts.

No, Blake, I never exploited him. But I could have. At eighteen I didn't go through the rigmarole of girls. Not that I bother at thirty-four either. It would have been easy, after a study session together in my room, my brain tired out from figures, without even getting up from my chair—to say, "Go on, then." He'd have been there on his knees with gaping mouth. It would have been too easy. If I'd done it once I'd have done it the next evening and the next. I never did use Tynus. Even when the animal in my trousers slid at the thought of what he could do.

Avon stared at the ceiling of his cabin.

Why the hell had Comrade picked on him?

#

The following day was nothing but spaceflight, which was why Blake had agreed to the soma. Cally slept late after her half night watch, while Jenna was on her way to bed again at the end of hers, only dropping into the galley to smirk around at Blake, Avon and Vila over breakfast. Vila had never left the galley and looked crumpled, repulsive and complacent. "Ready for your stint, Vila?" asked Blake after Jenna had notified them that the flight deck was now empty, and that she didn't double-watch even for a sorry and bibulous lot like she saw in front of her.

"Me? It's not me. Now where's Cally, she always remembers who's on. I only remember when it's not me."

"Must be the man with the headache to our right," said Blake, nodding sideways, towards where Avon sipped his dreadfully green vitamin solution.

"I think not, Blake," he demurred. "I believe it's the shirker to my centre-left."

"Blast," said Blake. He stood up, dumped the remains of an awesome meal, grinned at them and went off to do his duty.

"How's he so bloody hale?" grumbled Vila. "I poured him doubles."

"You poured me doubles," grumbled Avon. "I plan to kill you for it."

"Yep," said Vila. "I'll worry as soon as you're less green than what you're drinking."  

"Get that hideous simper off me," said Avon. "Or I'll throw up."

"And Jenna's worse than Blake. She with the least body mass and everything."

"Jenna has a stomach of iron. Blake has a girth to soak up a crate of soma. You have a rancid smell and I'm going to the flight deck for some sensible conversation."

"Good-oh," yawned Vila. "I'll wait for Cally and a prescription."

In spite of Blake playing pass-the-watch like any sound-minded crewmember, when Avon joined him on the flight deck he already had up his database on computer-control in the Federated Worlds. "Done the checks?" asked Avon.

"Jenna did."

That meant no. Blake tended to neglect these day-to-day interruptions. "How about I do?" Avon began on the routine checklist at the stations, while Blake stood at the side screen flicking through career records of senior officers. Why, Avon may inquire later. To keep abreast of Blake's investigations, he often minded the scanners and flight for him as he tracked down the new Control.

Today Blake volunteered an update. "These officers were part of a top-secret team on Earth thirty years ago. At the time Control was dismantled. To judge by their specialities, I think they may have had something to do with it."  

"They must be aging."

"Deceased. Retired. Deceased. Deceased," Blake listed. "And a Space Major. New out of the Academy then, he can't have been more than a dogsbody. Name of Provine. May be worth interrogating." Walking backwards to thud onto the couch, he said, "I think I'll do this sitting down."

"Paying for it, are you, Blake?"

"My jaw hasn't dropped off yet." He flicked to the next record. "Even at my rate of garrulity."

"Were you?" asked Avon remotely. "Myself, I lost at least half an hour. I recollect setting off to my cabin, and I recollect arriving there, and the missing interval between I can only presume I must have spent perambulating the corridors searching for it."

Down on the couch, Blake smiled to himself.

Up at the stations, Avon finished his checks and tidied up the plan he'd worked out. Evidence was what he lacked. Comrade's word was hearsay, and the Inga dates were circumstantial. With only words and dates put before him, Blake could go into denial. He could dismiss what the comrade he didn't remember had to say—but he'd believe what Avon told him. Avon was going to perjure himself and lay fabricated evidence out for Blake, to contradict what his brainwashers even now were drumming into his head. Blake needed something substantial to hang onto, if he were to defeat them. Something that falsified them at once. No room for argument. It was the only effective method Avon could think of. Afterwards, he'd apologise for it.

"Blake," he said three-quarters of an hour later. "I've been thinking about your memory."

"Have you?" Slouched with his elbow on the couch back and his head in his hand, Blake looked from the side screen up to Avon.

"At Exbar you told me it can be jogged. You heard the call-sign and remembered your time with your uncle. Is that right?"

"That's right. Funny how it happened. I hear hundreds of call-signs."

"What if I jog you about the Matter Transmission Project? You may recall your time on it."

"Won't help," said Blake. "They don't erase technical experience. I know about the project, just nothing about my life outside. You and I were in different divisions, worse luck. Only the work in common."

"Except we did meet."

Blake's hand dropped from his head. He stared narrowly at Avon as if he were responsible for the damage done to him. "We what, Avon?"

"I hope you excuse my silence," said Avon evenly. "I thought it was politeness."

"Politeness?"

"I saw no need to embarrass you."

"You saw a need to keep my past from me? My past belongs to me, Avon. It is mine. I have a right to it. Did these truisms not strike you?"

"Blake, it was a quarter hour meeting which has nothing to tell you of yourself. Nothing that will be news to you. And also I was awkward. Before now, Blake. I believed it was manners of me to forget along with you."

Rising from the couch, he walked up to Avon's station and braced himself with his hands on the edge of it. "All right, Avon," he said there, willing to compromise. "Tell me now and I'll excuse you for being too damned polite before."

Now he was thinking of Avon like a conspirator with the clinicians, robbing him of memories. Avon met his eyes. "If I misjudged, forgive me."

Blake did. Avon saw him do it, in the dropping of his eyes and the tired pull of his mouth. "You don't know what it's like, Avon. You wouldn't see what the bother is. It's as if I was a cardboard puppet, who trotted off to work every morning, but from where, who cares? As long as he behaves. As long as he doesn't have an independent thought in his head or a personal feeling in his chest. I mean to dig up me again, Avon, when I've time. There are ways. Like admitting myself to another bloody clinic. For now, tell me your anecdote. We met?" Blake looked up again and smiled. "I like it so far. I was twenty-eight on that project. Was I the same?"

"The same amiable Roj Blake of my acquaintance today."

"Not a piece of cardboard?"

"Only too human."  

"Were you the same?"

"I was probably nicer."

"This is worth hearing, then. Go on. Where did we meet? And who embarrassed whom, in a quarter of an hour?"

"I didn't say you embarrassed yourself then. But that you may now, upon hindsight and whilst sharing a ship with me."

"Hm," said Blake. "Well, don't spare my feelings. What on earth did I do?"

"Your division of the project was hosting ours for a conference. You and I ran into each other at the party after the stultifying workshops and lectures which your division subjected mine to."

"Sorry," said Blake.

"You weren't to blame. And the party wasn't so bad, if you like that kind of thing, which I don't."

"Did I spill wine over you?"

"No."

"Did I regurgitate wine over you?"

"Nothing so crass, Blake."

"That's a comfort. Was I churlish and shabby?"

"You were hospitable, which was your duty to us visitors, after all. You were so hospitable that you asked me home."

"I did?" Blake paused. "Know what I think?"

"No. What?"

"I think you're the embarrassed party. You weren't game to confess we got along."

Avon nodded and went on. "You asked me home to see your draft schematics which the bosses hadn't authorised, and which you were persuading me were feasible."

"Dull conversationalist I was. You didn't go to my home?"

"No."

"Shame. You could have described what I had on the walls. My furniture. Whether I shared with anyone. What was in my book collection. Why the hell didn't you go, Avon? I don't excuse you for that part."

"I passed up the treat of going to your home," Avon told him, "because as you asked me there, you did this." Blake was leaning at his station in a shirt and no tunic. Avon touched him. His hand slipped where his ribs ended and the flesh went softer, and slipped around his side to behind him, just over the trousers, to where he stroked his thumb down. It was the way Tynus had touched him the time he tried it on, the way Avon couldn't mistake. After this demonstration, Avon removed his hand again, and waited. He had his eyes down on his station, even though he half-expected Blake, or his conditioning rather, to punch him. That or deny it with panicked swearing.

"I, er," said Blake softly. "I must have found you an intriguing character, and perhaps I was a bit clumsy from the wine. There was wine, was there? Even if I didn't spill any on you."

Avon frowned at his instruments. "You weren't drunk."

"Just clumsy, then."

No, he wouldn't back out of this. "You just had poor taste, Blake."

"I daresay I've rotten taste. As far as that goes."

No, he can't do this. Avon nodded in disbelief. "You're trying to say that you meant that as a slap on the back, and that if I'd gone home with you, I'd have whiled away the evening over schematics for the furtherance of the project? My technical director would have found that hard to credit. I don't know about yours."

Hands fidgeting on the edge of the station, Blake said gently, "Well, as far as I know, at any rate. Which isn't far, you could argue. But, as far as I do. Did it worry you?" he asked then. "Thinking I was?"

"You know I've nothing against it."

"No. I know. It's no different."

"Nothing to be ashamed of."

"Far from it. And least out here, off Earth."

"After your behaviour—" tried Avon.

"Last night, you mean?"

"Following Matter Transmission."

"I see. Matter Transmission proves my theory, though. I said we'd have hit it off. I did at least, before I scared you away. I'm sorry about that."

To Avon, his reaction didn't make the least sense. If that was a denial of homosexuality, it was the sketchiest Avon had ever heard, with moderating clauses, as if he were apologetic for not being that way.

Blake was apologising.

At once Avon saw the last couple of months from Blake's perspective. That testing about Tynus. To follow up, Avon had questioned him about past exploits with Inga and future intentions with Jenna. If the crew had caught sight of them hugging, they'd laugh at Blake but they'd gape at Avon. And the next morning Avon touched him up, with a lame tale about a party six years ago.

He thinks I'm queer. Last night he didn't, but he suspects it now. He must deduce I was touchy at that party and saw too much in his gesture. That I've been believing him homosexual but cagey about it, just like me, and that this is my roundabout and safe way of saying—I am, Blake, are you? We can drop the smokescreens with each other.

I'm doing this for your sake. You're the queer. I'm the damn idiot attempting to help you. Before this gets any more farcical, you can forget it. I'm fed up, and I give up.

Avon didn't care what it looked like from Blake's perspective, as he climbed down from his station on the other side and said, "You can watch your own watch." He headed for the steps off the flight deck.

"Avon," said Blake even more softly. "Wait a moment. Where are you going?"

Avon didn't wait a moment, and he was going to kick his cabin wall, which would do for Blake's head, being too thick to dent.

#

It was late that day, and he knocked at Blake's cabin, resolved to provoke him into knowledge. Think I'm queer, do you? Think you're not, do you? We'll see. Sidestep this if you can.

"Hello, Avon. I'm glad you're here."

"Are you?" Avon's eyes made a cursory acknowledgment of his face, before dwelling with more interest on his chest. Three of his shirt buttons were done up, two weren't. "You forgot to finish dressing again."

"Bad memory," answered Blake. "Come in."

"Hospitable of you." Detouring a pace as he went past, the side of his arm bumped against Blake's chest.

Blake shut his door. "I'd offer you a drink, only perhaps you think it too soon."

"Or perhaps you think it too risky."

He paused. "A brandy, then? Not a soma at least. Have a chair."

"Which chair?"

"Any chair you like, Avon." He crouched to find a bottle in his cupboard.

Of Blake's two armchairs, Avon chose the one which had a pair of trousers slung over the back. "You forgot to do your washing," he remarked, hand up to curl around the sagging hip of them.

"Throw them off," said Blake.

"Why? They don't smell bad." He turned his face into them. "They smell good. Must be the Exbar dirt."

"I hope I've washed them since then."

At home in his armchair and fondling his old trousers, Avon pondered Blake as he sat down in the facing armchair and opened the brandy on the low table between. Lazily Avon said, "Do you know, Blake, there are times when I could throw you over the furniture and ravish you?"

The pouring brandy stopped, but without any spillages outside the glasses, and before long the pouring resumed. "Do you know, Avon, there are times I could throw you over the furniture and spank you?"

He grinned. "I see I don't frighten you. Dauntless, aren't you, Blake?"

"You were trying to frighten me? And for a moment there I thought you were getting affectionate." Blake gave him a scowl of resentment along with his glass of brandy.

Avon took the brandy. "Dauntless, fair-minded, and you even respect me. You've nothing against homosexuals. You think I'm a splendid chap. You're glad I showed up at your cabin. Am I right so far?"

"Yes, you're right, Avon," he said tightly.

"Pity I won't get anything out of you. With all that on my side."

"Avon, how about you drink your brandy and act like your charming self."

Avon swirled his brandy, not up to drinking any. "That's the last time you'll be hugging me. It was lovely, Blake. I enjoyed it. If you'd hugged any tighter, I'd have gone into shivers in your arms. Well, you're warned now, Blake. I mean, I might have got carried away."

"When you've finished punishing me for being a stupid clod, Avon, we can discuss this like a couple of human beings."

"Yes, yes. And I wonder what you're going to say. Why don't I try and guess? I expect you're going to tell me you're sorry. I rather fancy you might tell me you've thought it over. If you particularly respect me today, you may put forward that you would if you could."

"And what would you rather that I say, Avon?"

"I'd rather that you said, get your trousers down."

Blake put his elbows on his knees and steamed.

"But I see you're not going to say that. So my next choice would be for you to tell me the truth. That you'd sooner look at an annoyed phibian with its trousers down."

"Well, that isn't true," grunted Blake.

"That I'm repugnant to you and you're going to go and sleep with Jenna tonight to forget it."

"I've told you my thoughts about you, Avon. Do you want to hear them again? They haven't changed."

"Not an iota?"

"No. Not an iota. I always thought you had terrible manners. Beyond that, I was always glad of a visit from you. It's never dull. You're not a dull man. You're nothing if not interesting."

"That's somewhat more diplomatic than last night." 

"Last night you were in a sweeter mood."

"And you were so thwacked you'd have gone sentimental over anyone."

"I was so thwacked I told you my feelings. You know, Avon. Those things that it isn't protocol to mention. Not done, is it? No, good form is to behave as if we're mortal enemies. I get sick of that. But I don't tread on your toes. You can have it your own way. Except when I'm thwacked. At odds as we are about the Liberator, I know you like to avoid entanglements. So it's not made harder than it already is. Our conflicting priorities and what may have to be done about them."

"Is that why?"

"Yes, that's why you keep your distance. Lest you decide you have to dump me for the good of the rest of you. Lest I decide I have to dump you so I can get some work done. Well, I decided not to go that way and I won't. You have a fair case. I put you all at risk. It isn't just my personal liking for you that keeps you on board. I acknowledge that you have a case."

"Are you going to dump me now, Blake? After all, it is awkward."

"No, I'm not," said Blake.

"You're not feeling awkward at all?"

"Yes, I'm feeling awkward."

"Ah. I'm glad the difficulties of my situation make a dent in you."

"All right, I'm dented. I'm bloody dented. And if you want the truth, I don't know what to do about it. "

"You don't?"

"No, I don't know a damned thing what to do about it."

"Worries you, does it?"

"It worries me. I'd do a lot for you, Avon. I always wanted to. I love you."

"I misheard that."

"No, you didn't. You're a remarkable bastard, and I love you, and that's nothing new."

"I see. You love me. In a manly, chums-together way. Nothing sissy about it. You love me. But you're not going to ask me to stay the night."

Blake gazed for a long time at the deck near Avon's feet. "I'm sorry."

"Blake?"

"What is it, Avon?"

"Won't you try?"

He was silent a while longer. "Try?"

"Mess around with me. Nothing too queer. Not on your part. You know, Blake."

"That be enough for you?"

"Would you do it?"

"Yes."

"With gritted teeth?"

"I'd do what would work. I'd be glad of your company. I'm happy to hear there's something about me you like. I don't want to be bad for you. I want to be good for you. You're good for me. In spite of damn everything. I'd hate to be trying to do this whole job without you. I rely on you. If you want to get in my bed though I've not an awful lot to do for you there, then you know where it is. It's been empty a fair while."

"That's good of you, Blake. I should decline."

Blake drank some brandy. "Let me know, Avon."

"Blake?"

"Yes?"

"I think nobody else would have answered like that. But then I wouldn't have been so crazy as to ask that of anybody else but you."

"That's because," said Blake. "You trust me. You trust me to do what's right with you. You know we could damned do with each other. You think enough of me to put up with my leadership, my head and my thorough lack of practise at this sort of thing. That's enough for me, Avon. Come over here. There's room for both of us on this chair."

"There isn't," said Avon, though he got up.

"There is now." Blake threw a knee off the side and pulled Avon in beside him. He hugged Avon again, chests together, and put his fingers in his hair and stroked.

He's doing this for me because I'm homosexual though he's not. In actual fact I'm doing this for him because he's homosexual though I'm not. I won't do less for his sake than he'd do for mine.

Blake stroked his head, and then his arm up and down, and then rubbed at his kneecap. "Trade you. My right hand looks monotonous to me but yours looks like company."

"Use it a lot, do you?" asked Avon.

"Want to know, do you?'

"I want to watch."

"You're not watching anything. You're pulling your weight around here for once."

"All right," said Avon. "I'll pull yours then. I suppose that's what you meant?"

"Meanwhile," offered Blake, "I'll shoulder your burden, and that."

"It is burdensome," said Avon. "I could do without it."

"Don't talk like that."

"It's nothing but a nuisance. I'm sure you agree."

"I don't agree. I bet it makes you happy. Sometimes."

"Not lately. Rarely."

"Will do. And that's why I don't agree it's a nuisance." Blake thumbed his thigh. "I like you happy."

"How do you know?"

"Guesswork. Besides, I like you miserable." He opened Avon's waistband.

"I never met anyone remotely like you, Blake."

"I trust not."

"That wasn't an insult."

"I'd turf you out of my chair if it was." Blake drew down his zip.

Avon squirmed his right arm out from between them and found the elbow room to find Blake's lap. "Blake?"

"Roj."

"Roj Blake, if you must be ceremonious at a time like this. Who goes first?"

"We start together, Kerr Avon. The last to finish is a... well, has had more luck over the past few years than the other one."

"I haven't had any."

"Nor have I." He dug under Avon's underpants and grasped him. His eyes widened to look curiously in his face. "Got you," he said with contemplative softness.

Avon slithered in to curve around him. "Got you. Roj Blake. What am I going to do with you?"

"Be damned sweet to me."

"That's right." He tightened to a fist. "What are you going to do with me?"

"Keep you."

Avon laughed at that. Blake grinned at it. His thumb skated up and Avon told him, "That's glorious, Blake."

"That?" He skated up and down.

"That. That." His chest collapsed in a sigh.

"Kerr Avon," said Blake as a brag, "likes me doing that."

"I do, Blake. I could boil over right now."

"Ah, don't though. Don't though. Told you I'm keeping you. You're at my mercy now. And I don't think I have any. No, I can't muster up a scrap of mercy in me." So he mused as his thumb skated.

"Don't have any, Blake," Avon snarled at his cheek.

Blake rumbled. "Well, if you're not going to cry for mercy, mercy isn't what you'll get."

"Fantastic," said Avon. "Be pitiless. Ah, that's cruel, Blake. That's nasty and I can't stand it."

"Mean that, do you?"

"That's the truth," said Avon. "I can't." To get quarter, he clutched on Blake. "Try it yourself and see."

"Ugh," said Blake. "Tighter. Tighter. Throttle me. Ah, I told you tighter."

"Going to squeeze you up, Blake."

"Tight."

"Going to wring you out."

Blake jerked against him in the chair. "Damn but that's tremendous, Avon. That's tremendous. Do that. For me, Avon. Do that for me."

"Just for you."

"Ah damn." With a glazed face Blake butted him around, to where he needed him, and pushed his damp mouth down onto Avon's. They kissed, croaking and dragging each other to it, the lower hands slackened. Then Blake shook his vision into focus and asked rationally, "Don't mind, do you?"

"No," grinned Avon. Who had forgotten who was supposed to be homosexual?

Blake stared him in the eye and asked him, "Stroke me while I kiss you, Avon. Stroke me while I kiss you."

Avon ran his fingers up him.

"That's the way. I'm going to jerk you right off, Avon. I am." He kissed him again, and ringed him around and slid. "You're just going to go off like a bomb, you are, when I'm done with you," he muttered around his mouth. He lapped at Avon's tongue. "Aren't you?"

"Reckon so," grinned Avon.

"Ah." Blake glanced down at what his own hand was doing, and his shoulders quaked. "Damn it to hell, Avon," he rasped out, and dropped his penis as if stung. "Damn it, damn it to hell," he swore.

"Roj?" Avon caught his arms, but Blake twisted down and off the chair, winding up on his knees with his cheek against Avon's crotch. He whimpered and thumped the arm of the chair. Then he licked.

Avon lost his mind. "Do it, Blake, do it, Blake, do it." He shoved his hips up. "Do it. Do it."

Blake gulped him and guzzled at him and drooled over him, with no art whatsoever and forgetting to mind his teeth. Avon clamped his underarms with his knees and caressed his neck wildly. "You, Blake. You, Blake. You, Blake." Blake tried to swallow him. "Why don't you fuck me after this, Blake? Will you? Will you fuck me? Blake?"

Blake choked on him, but only pushed himself down, bull-headed. His throat spasmed, trying to cough. "Drink, Blake," crooned Avon. "Thirsty, Blake? Drink me."

He went off. He yelled and rolled in the chair but he kept Blake just where he was and hurled it right down his throat. "Blake," he hissed then. "Ah, Blake." The knuckles of his fingers ached around Blake's neck, and a thigh cramped from trapping him in his knees. In a while Avon unlocked his stiff joints. "Well, well," he laughed. "Blake. So. There we have it, do we not, Roj?"

His penis fell out of Blake's mouth. Blake had sagged on him, but when the support of Avon's knees was gone he slumped back to the right. He went over flat on his side, to hit the deck with hip and then shoulder. He lay there.

Avon shoved the table out of the way, crashing the brandy bottle. Kneeling beside Blake, he peeled open his eyes. They were rolled up, showing a dirty white.

Avon stood. He grabbed the old pair of trousers and wiped Blake's chin and slack mouth. Then he boosted Blake's hips to drag on his underpants over his soft penis, and did up his zip and belt. Holding his own trousers up, he went over to Blake's cabin intercom and punched the ship-wide button. "Cally," he said while he hiked up his pants, thrust his shirt in and fastened his fly. "Medical alert. Blake's quarters." He punched off.

Going back to Blake, he crouched over him and pressed two fingers at the artery under his jaw. Fast but all right. At last he said, "I'm sorry, Blake." He waited for Cally.

#

Cally hung about the diagnostics and glowered. She'd been quarrelsome, wanting to scan Blake. But these injuries weren't corporeal, to be helped by snapping healers onto him, and she knew little about Federation brain tampering. The only crewmember with much grasp of the business was Orac.

The computer had a sensor link, hooking it up to Blake's head. "Traumatic motor paralysis," was its verdict. "There is no physiological damage. His state is the result of erosion of his conditioning."

"There's nothing wrong with him," Jenna said back at it, frustrated. "He just can't talk, see or hear. What do you mean, nothing physiological?"

From the door of medical bay, Vila told her, "His memory's popped up and done this to him."

"Not yet," clarified Orac. "This collapse is a conditioned response, to prevent Blake accessing his suppressed memories. The suppressive structures were threatened, and he withdrew into coma. That way he can go no further towards counteracting his treatment."

"Smart of the clinics," murmured Avon. He stood with Jenna over Orac. "Then the patient goes straight back to see a nice doctor. Without being awake to complain about it. Is this always done, Orac?"

"I have not examined any other memory erase subjects."

"You didn't know this would happen, then? You can only report on what has happened, after the fact. Correct?"

"Who cares?" said Jenna. "Can we get him out of it?"

Orac answered the last question. "Blake will need tranquillisation—"

"Oh, you're kidding," said Jenna in disgust.

The computer ignored her. "—to reduce his neuronal activity, which is hyperactive now."

Vila put in a glum joke. "You didn't know he had it in him, Avon."

"Then he will wake. But I advise you not to wake him without an expert present."

"An expert what exactly?" asked Avon.

"A psychotherapist."

"A shrink." Jenna blew out her cheeks.

"Specialising in post-conditioning syndromes."

"Sure," said Jenna. "Round the next corner."

"Blake has severe thought disturbance after the failure of his former treatment. He now has the potential to access his memories. But his re-structuring must be done under professional guidance, and with medication. I," ended Orac modestly, "am not equipped to treat major disorders."

"No-one was going to ask you," snorted Jenna. "Why did it fail anyway, his memory suppression? It just bombed out, after six years?"

"That was due to trauma," sighed Orac.

"What trauma?"

"Me," murmured Avon, to Jenna next to him. But Orac was louder.

"Hypnotic behavioural conditioning. Blake transgressed an instruction, and was punished with a conditioned stress reaction."

"What instruction?" pursued Jenna.

Avon left it up to the computer.

"To avoid experiencing morally deviant affects," it explicated in a what-else-you-ignoramuses drone.

"To avoid what?" she shouted.

Avon translated. "Not to be queer."

Hunched over the computer ready to abuse it, she found herself staring up at Avon. "Ah. Right," she said next, and straightened up, and scrubbed at the side of her face. After glancing about her feet as if she'd dropped something, she followed the hook-up leads to where Blake lay on the medical bed, flat and nonresponsive. At his headrest, hands on the cushioning either side of his head, she looked at him upside-down. "Poor bastard," muttered Jenna.

Nobody else spoke.

Jenna muttered on to herself, though for everyone to overhear. "I didn't know. I must have made it worse for him."

Avon went into his explanations. "That Freedom Party member we met with Avalon two months ago. He told me. I finally told Blake. You see for yourselves what happened. I should have shut up."

There was silence, until Cally butted into it. "What does it mean?" she asked. "Queer?"

All heads turned to her. Vila, who was shuffling about over by the door, shouldered the duty of answering. "Uh, means he likes fellows. In bed, you know. Instead of the ladies, you know."

"Oh." Cally peered around at the three of them, looking very Auronar, that is, it was anyone's guess what she was thinking.

"It's illegal," Vila went on. "They get you for it. They get in your head." Hearing psychomanipulation jargon, he'd made faces and stayed at the entrance. He'd been through adjustment himself. But now he came in, over to Blake's feet, and sniffed. "Always thought that was a rough trick to play on a chap just for getting his jollies."

"What you get for living in the domes," fumed Jenna. "Lucky I grew up on spaceships. They have grounds to do the same to me. And I never dared treat Blake to any of those stories, did I? It's probably funny if you think about it." She pushed her jaw out to the side, and thrust a hand into Blake's hair.

"Yeah. If Blake could think about anything, he'd laugh," said Vila, going maudlin. "Knew how to see the funny side, did Blake. Even when he was getting me shot at. He never did them any harm."

"He did actually," Jenna reminded him. "More harm than they bargained for from an ex-patient of theirs. Just not half enough harm."

Avon said, "This isn't a wake." Nobody had even thought to ask him whether he'd done more than inform Blake. But then why should they?

"What is it, then?" moped Vila. "You know, when they've mucked around with your head, and it goes, it's not easy to put back together again. I mean, they made him stress out, which dropped the memory blocks they'd put up—those clinicians have done so much work on him they're bamboozling each other."

Cally said sensibly, "Blake needs psychiatric therapy. Where can we go for that?"

Avon answered, "Most of what there is to be read about memory treatments is from Phoren Minor. A non-aligned planet in sector six. They've wiped up after the Federation clinics before. The doctors there can be trusted to be doctors and nothing else."

"You certain about that?" Jenna threw at him.

"I told you, rebels take their head cases there."

"Yes—Phoren Minor," said Cally. "I remember Avalon gave us that name, when we had her on the ship. A comrade of hers had been on Phoren Minor for a year. His memory erase had failed. Like Blake's."

"A year?" That was Jenna.

Vila wanted to know, "Did they fix him, though?"

"He was back working with Avalon," nodded Cally. "His memory was restored. Avalon told Avon and me about it, in case Blake should have problems." She looked to Avon for confirmation. "It was Phoren Minor she said?"

"I don't know. I wasn't listening in on the pair of you."

"We're going to dump Blake on some planet for a year?" Jenna eyed Cally. "That's a smart plan, that is."

"Without medical help, Jenna, he will remain as he is. Or if we wake him, he'd only be—confused."

"Cracked," said Vila. "Nothing like multiple adjustment to end you up in a mental home. That's where you'll find the famous thieves of yesteryear. His brain retired before he did, is what we say."

"Blake had more of a brain to begin with than your professional role models," Avon told him, then looked at Jenna. "We've no way of knowing how long it will need with Blake. The doctors can estimate that for us, when they hear his history and examine him. You want him fixed, don't you? Or don't you?"

"Of course I want him fixed. Do you think, if I'd known, I'd've—" She glared at him, sulky, and guilty over her hot pursuit of Blake. "But what the hell do we do while Blake's at a shrink?"

"Keep out of trouble. Do nothing rash. Stay away from the Federation." Avon glanced at each of them. "In order that we are safe and alive to return for him. When he is sane." At that word there was silence from the others. "Well, do I give Zen flight instructions to Phoren Minor?"

Vila shrugged. "I guess. Can we take a holiday? Blake's off taking one somewhere." He sniffed again.

Jenna stroked Blake's hair and wouldn't talk to Avon.

Cally said with decision, "We've no other option. He has to be cured."

"That's three to one, Jenna. If you're against it? And not counting Blake, who isn't voting."

"Go to Phoren fucking Minor."

"Which makes it unanimous." Leaving the crew in medical, three of them clustered around their comatose ex-leader, Avon walked alone to the flight deck. His flight deck.

After the Liberator was underway to Phoren Minor, he went to Blake's tray of data cubes and slotted in the latest, skimming through it on the side screen. Blake wouldn't be killing any more of them at the new Control. A waste to wipe the information, though. Blake would want him to pass it on to Avalon. He'd do that.

What if he met Comrade again there? "You picked the wrong crewmember. You should have tried Jenna or Vila."

To the empty flight deck, Avon said aloud, "There are some who don't need conditioning. They do it themselves. Out of cowardice."

Would the crew forget Blake, spoilt by a year off? As for himself, he had a year to work out whether he had any right to go back for Blake. Or whether he ought to send the ship for him, without himself on board. That rather depended on whether or not he'd known what was doing. _I should have known._

_Did I?_

###


End file.
